by James Jones
“Dont gimme any excuse, collegeboy,” Warden sneered. He split the plea apart and dealt with boths halves deftly. “The Sickbook was back at nine-thirty. O’Bannon didnt send the orderly around till ten. You sit around here all morning on your dead ass working a crossword. How many times do I hafta tell you? Keep your work up to date. Do everything the minute it comes in. Once you get behind you never get caught up.”
“Okay, Top,” Mazzioli said, crestfallen, all his blandness gone. “I’ll do it now. Let me have the book.” He reached out to take it, but Warden did not relax his grip. Tall, deep-chested, and disgusted he stared down at the clerk, a malignant expression in the ends of his eyebrows.
Mazzioli looked at him. “Oh,” he said, guiltily, and let go. “Soon as I finish filin these. I’ll do it soon as I finish these.” He turned from the silent sarcasm to his folders.
Warden tossed the Sickbook on his desk. “I already done it,” he said in a normal tone, disgustedly. “Its all fixed up already.”
Mazzioli shot him an admiring glance from the file cabinet. “Thanks, Top,” he said.
“Go to hell,” Warden said, violent again. “If you dont watch yer step, you’re gonna find your ass busted back to private and do a little straight duty. Which would probably kill a college angelina like you. A classic example of the American educational system, thats what you are.”
Mazioli did not believe the threat, but he put a sad expression on his face, just in case. Warden saw completely through it.
“You think I’m kiddin ya?” Warden said, with his overpowering violence. “Keep on like you’re goin and watch. You’ll find yourself divin for pearls in the kitchen. I’m the first sergeant here, not you, and if theres any leisure around here I get it, see? If there aint enough for two, then you work. And if you dont quit hangin around with them two-bit philosophers over at Regmint you’ll be scrubbin this Orderly Room floor for me.
“What was the discussion on today?” he said.
“Van Gogh,” Mazzioli said. “He’s a painter.”
“Well, well,” Warden said. “Do tell. A painter. Did you ever read Lust For Life?”
“Yes,” Mazzioli said, surprised. “Did you?”
“No,” Warden said. “I never read.”
“You ought to read it, Top. Its a good book.”
“Did you ever read The Moon and Sixpence?” Warden said.
“Sure,” Mazzioli said, surprised again. “Have you?”
“No,” Warden said. “I never read.”
Mazzioli turned to look at him. “Aw now,” he said. “What are you doing, kidding me?”
“Who, me?” Warden said. “Dont flatter yourself, kid.”
“I bet you read them,” Mazzioli said. He laid down his filing and sat down and lit a cigaret. “You know, I’ve got a theory on Gauguin.”
“To hell with your theories,” Warden said. “Lets get them files fixed up. I got some business to attend to myself.”
“Okay,” Mazzioli said. He got up angrily and went back to work. But he could not keep quiet, once he had started. It always seemed everything he knew, Warden knew better, and it was not right. Sometimes he thought it was true sin that Warden had never gone to business college and developed his natural intellect, learning, at the same time, to be civilized.
“Gaugin’s painting was two dimensional,” he said over his shoulder. “It had no depth. My theory is it was because he was too cynical. Everything he painted was harsh and ugly because he was bitter against life. That’s my theory.”
Warden looked at him a moment, pityingly, and then laughed. “What are you goin to do when this war comes along, kid?” he said.
“We wont get in the war,” Mazzioli said, “We’ll stay out. And anyway, if we did, I’d do my part as much as you would, by God.”
“To be a painter any more, kid,” Warden said, “a man has got to be cynical and bitter in the first place. What did you want him to believe in? The Stock Exchange? If he had, he would of stayed there.”
“He should have believed in his art,” Mazzioli said.
“Believe in my ass,” Warder said. “Did you ever hear of a guy named Titian?”
“A little,” Mazzioli said, irked because he did not know him well enough to have a theory.
“He painted a little job called Venus of Urbino,” Warden grinned at him slyly. “It was a picture of a woman with her finger up her cunt.”
Mazzioli was really shocked. “I don’t believe it.”
“Look it up, kid,” Warden grinned. “He believed in his art. He made a lot of money off it, too, I hear.”
Looking at the horror still on Mazzioli’s face, Warden laughed outright. “So Grant’s got the clap, hey?” he said, conversationally.
“I told him he should have taken a pro,” Mazzioli said distastefully, but still angrily. “He never takes a pro after he gets a piece of ass. Or at least use a rubber. But he dont do that either. Crazy fool.” He was still thinking about the picture, and it made him shudder.
Warden snorted contemptuously. “Do you wash your feet with your socks on, kid? After such a beautiful, soul-stirring thing as a piece of ass you want to go take a goddam pro and come out smellin like a dispensary. Where’s your sense of adventure? You’re the kind of rabbit would look for the nails in a piece of antique furniture.”
“What?” asked Mazzioli.
“Nothin,” Warden snorted. “Where’d Grant say he got it?”
“At the Ritz Rooms,” Mazzioli said distastefully.
“Serves the son of a bitch right. He should of known better’n to go to that crummy joint. He’ll be a goddam private in the rear rank when he gets out of the hospital. So he’s payin for it.” Warden stood up and banged his fist down on his desk so hard that Mazzioli jumped in spite of himself.
“Let that be a goddam lesson to you, Corporal,” Warden said violently, “if you dont want to lose those goddam stripes you love so much.”
“Who?” Mazzioli said, astonished. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Stick to your goddamned rubber glove and become a queer, like the sex hygiene lectures advise you.”
“Now listen,” Mazzioli said indignantly.
“You listen,” Warden said. “I got some very, very important business to attend to, see? And I wont be back till probly four o’clock. You stay here in this Orderly Room till I get back, see? and if I hear of you even goin to the latrine, I’ll bust you down tomorrow, see?”
“Aw, for Christ’s sake, Top,” Mazzioli protested. “I got some things I have to do this afternoon.”
“This business of mine,” Warder said, grinning to himself, “is strictly official. You had the whole goddam morning off to discuss art. You got a soft job; if you dont like it, you can quit any time. How many cupsacoffee you have in Choy’s this morning, hah?”
“I only went down for coffee once,” Mazzioli protested.
“Four o’clock. And you better be here when I get back. Theres about six letters there to be typed up and next week’s drill schedule to type up. Not counting all the filin that you’ve let get behind.”
“Okay, Top,” Mazzioli said dejectedly as Warden shouldered himself into his raincoat and picked up a sheaf of papers, seeing his afternoon sacktime departing on the black wings of tyranny. The Warden, and his prisoners. Anything to keep somebody from doing what they wanted. He was a manic-depressive, Mazzioli decided suddenly, happily, or a paranoiac.
He stepped to the window to watch through the dim gloom of the rainy afternoon where The Warden might be going. Official business, my old fanny.
But Warden had anticipated that, and he walked along the street around the quad, resolutely through the rain, it drumming boomingly on his sugar-stiff campaign hat and rustling in his raincoat, that was already beginning to wet his back, and climbed the stairs to Regimental Hq above the sallyport.
From the porch he looked back across the quad and saw Mazzioli’s head and shoulders dark against the light from the Orderly Room window, almost as
if he had his nose pushed against the glass. What a kid, he thought, no more conception of a soldier than a rabbit and taking it out in talking about art.
He laughed out loud, throwing it out defiantly against the sound-blanketing curtain of the rain, feeling in him the smoking sparking pinwheel of the coming profanation of the sacred mark of caste. Maybe she wont even be home, he told himself. Yes she will, she’ll be there.
He took the papers out from inside his raincoat to see if they were wet. They were authentic letters, ones Holmes really should have signed before he left. Always be prepared, boy scout, he grinned.
He stopped a moment, grinning more, before the bulletin board just inside the doorway. On the side that had been stencilled PERMANENT was a copy of McCrae’s In Flanders Fields printed in red old-English type on vellum and with the margins adorned with tortured figures in the pancake British helmet of the War. Next to it was a poem called The Warhorse by an unknown general, Retired, of the World War, the first World War, comparing an old soldier to the old firehorse who came running every time the bell rang. Then there was Col Delbert’s latest memorandum right beside it, complimenting the troops on their spirit and athletic prowess and esprit de corps, all tangible results, the memo said, of their high moral character, as propounded by the Chaplain and the Sex Hygiene Lectures, although this was more or less implied.
Warden crossed the hall and started down the other stairs and then he saw the two colonels from Brigade standing in the dusky corridor with its varnished glassfront trophycases talking, the rest of the hall now at two o’clock deserted and the office doors, except for Sgt/Maj O’Bannon’s who practically lived in his, closed. He had hoped there would be nobody around and he looked closely at the colonels to make sure they didnt know him. He looked just a little bit too long.
“Oh, Sergeant,” one of them called. “Come here, Sergeant.”
He came back up the three or four steps and walked over to them and saluted, restraining a powerful urge to look at his watch.
“Where is Colonel Delbert, Sergeant?” the other one asked, the tall one.
“I dont know, Sir. I havent seen him.”
“Has he been in today?” the fat one asked, his voice wheezing a little. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and unbuttoned the rainwet shiny gabardine of his topcoat that was identical to that of the tall one except in shade of color.
“I’m sure I couldnt say, Sir,” Warden said.
“Dont you work here, Sergeant?” the tall one asked narrowly.
“No, Sir,” Warden said, thinking fast. “I dont work in Hq. I have a company, Sir.”
“What company?” the short one wheezed.
“A Company, Sir,” he lied. “Sergeant Dedrick of A Company.”
“Oh of course,” the short one wheezed. “I thought I knew you. I make a point to know our noncoms in Brigade. You just slipped me.”
“Dont you know enough to report when you come up to an officer, Sergeant?” the tall one rasped.
“Yes, Sir, but I have some business to attend to and I guess I had it on my mind.”
“Thats no excuse,” the tall one rasped, militarily. “How long have you been a noncom, Sergeant?”
“Nine years, Sir,” Warden said.
“Well,” the tall one said. Then he said, “You should know enough to watch things like that then. I’m certainly glad none of your men were here to see the example you just set.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said, wanting to look at his watch. If he would just only brace me now, he thought. Thats all we need. We could play like back at the Point, upperclassmen hazing the Dumbjohns.
“Carry on, Sergeant,” the tall one said. “And in the future be more careful.”
“Yes, Sir, I will, Sir.” He saluted quickly and made for the stairs, before the other changed his mind. Holmes’s wife might be going out this afternoon; if she was, and they made him miss her . . . He laughed, inside, to think what those two would think if they had known what he was thinking.
“He sure was in a hurry,” he heard the fat one wheeze.
“My god,” the tall one said. “They dont care who they give rockers to any more. It didnt use to be like that.”
“Dedrick always was a dumb bastard,” the short one said, as if discussing one of the horses that he never rode. “Thats how I remembered him, his dumbness. First word he said I knew him.”
“Its a damned disgrace, what the service’s coming to,” the tall one said. “In the old days, a noncom would have been busted flat, to do a thing like that. It isnt like it used to be.”
“I wonder where the hell Delbert is,” the short one wheezed.
Warden, laughing silently, went on down the inside stairs and out into the sallyport past the folding iron gate that would be open until Retreat, in too big a hurry to be mad.
Somebody called to him from Choy’s but he only waved and went on, out the front of the sallyport, crossing Waianae Avenue to the officers’ quarters, walking along it through the rain till he came to the alley behind Holmes’s corner house. He stopped under the shelter of a big old elm, grinning to himself because he was breathing so heavy, feeling the autumnal chill creep up to him under his raincoat when he stopped, thinking this was a fine day for it and that if she had taken all the others there was no reason why she shouldnt take him too, before he went up finally and knocked on the door.
Inside a longlegged black shadow moved across the dimness of the livingroom doorway cutting off the light, and he caught the scissor-flash of naked legs cutting the light and opening again in another step and his breath seemed to go very deep in his chest.
“Mrs Holmes,” he called, knocking, his head pulled down between his shoulders in the rain.
The shadow moved again inside without sound and stepped through the door into the kitchen to become Karen Holmes in shorts and halter.
“What is it?” she said. “Oh. If it isnt Sergeant Warden. Hello, Sergeant. You better step inside or you’ll get wet. If you’re looking for my husband, he isnt here.”
“Oh,” Warden said, opening the screendoor and jumping in past the water that ran off the eave. “And if I’m not looking for him?” he said.
“He still isnt here,” Karen Holmes said. “If that does you any good.”
“Well, I’m looking for him. You know where he is?”
“I havent the slightest idea. Perhaps at the Club, having a drink or two,” she smiled thinly. “Or was it snort? I guess it was snort you said, wasnt it?”
“Ah,” Warden said. “The Club. Why didnt I think of that? I got some papers its important for him to sign today.”
He eyed her openly, traveling up the length of leg in the very short homemade-looking trunks, to the hollow of the hidden navel, to the breasts tight against the halter, to the woman’s eyes that were watching his progress and his open admiration indifferently, without interest.
“Kind of chilly for trunks, aint it?” he said.
“Yes.” Karen Holmes looked at him unsmiling. “Its cool today. Sometimes its very hard to keep warm, isnt it?” she said. “What is it you want, Sergeant?”
Warden felt his breath come in very slowly, and go very deep, clear down into his scrotum.
“I want to go to bed with you,” he said, conversationally. That was how he had planned it, how he had wanted to say it, but now hearing it it sounded very foolish to him. He watched the eyes, in the unchanged face, widen only a little, so little that he almost missed it. A cool cool customer, Milton, he said to himself. Leva was right about the porcupine. You and your woman’s intuition.
“All right,” Karen Holmes said disinterestedly.
With Warden, standing dripping on the porch, it was as if he was listening to her but he did not hear her.
“What are the papers?” she said then, reaching for them. “Let me see them. Maybe I can help you.”
Warden pulled them back, grinning, feeling the grin stiff on his face, masklike. “You wouldnt know anything about them. These are bus
iness.”
“I always take an interest in my husband’s business,” Karen Holmes said.
“Yes,” Warden grinned. “Yes, I sure bet you do. Does he take as big an interest in your business?”
“Do you want me to help you with them?”
“Can you sign his name?”
“Yes.”
“So it looks like his own signature?”
“I dont know about that,” she said, still not smiling. “I never tried.”
“Well I can,” Warden said. “I can do everything for him but wear his goddamned bars. At that I draw the line. But these papers go to Division and he’s got to sign them himself.”
“Then I’d better call the Club,” she said, “hadnt I? That is where he is.”
“Having a drink or two,” Warden said.
“But I’ll be glad to call him for you, Sergeant.”
“To hell with that. I never like to disturb a man drinking. I could use a drink myself right now. Bad.”
“But if its business,” Karen Holmes said.
“Anyway, I dont think you’ll find him at the Club. I got a faint suspicion he went to town with Colonel Delbert,” Warden grinned at her.
Karen Holmes did not answer. She stared at him unsmiling from a cold reflective face that did not know he still was there.
“Well,” he said. “Aint you going to ask me in?”
“Why, yes, Sergeant,” Karen Holmes said. “Come right in.”
She moved then, slowly, as if her joints had got rusty from standing still so long, and stepped back up the single step into the kitchen to let him in. Warden, standing on the porch, caught a flash of female hairflesh, etched ivory as she moved her legs. He followed her in, watching her cutely teetering buttocks in the tight cloth, that was the only word for it: cutely; cutely because femalely, because womanly, roundly without the harsh angularity of maleness that in the barracks could become so sickening, cutely first one up the other down, then the other up and the first down, quiveringly, cutely, as she walked ahead of him.
“What kind of drink do you want, Sergeant?”
“I dont care,” he said. “Any drink’ll do.”